self as though her throat were a platter. It was much the same as with the fulmar petrels. Numbers of the young have left their nests, and keep all together, standing on the rocks or floating on the sea. Others remain, and I notice that these keep flapping their wings. This must strengthen them, and have the effect of preparing Dædalus for his first flight—for it seems probable that these particular ones have not made it. But they have, though, and bang goes a provisional hypothesis! Every moment, to laugh at me, one or other of them is flying out from the ledges, whilst others are returning to them.
When one of these young kittiwakes opens its bill, it is at once apparent that the inside of its mouth is much less brilliantly coloured than it is in the parent bird, being of a pale pinkish, merely, with, perhaps, a tinge of light yellow. As for the grown bird's mouth, one can hardly exaggerate the lurid brightness of it. The whole buccal cavity, including, as I think is usual, the tongue, is of a fine rich red, or orange-red colour, carrying on that of the naked skin adjoining the mandibles outside, with which, indeed, it is continuous. It is just the same in the case of the old and young shag. The mouth of the former presents a uniform surface of splendid gamboge, whilst that of the latter is almost the natural pink, only just beginning to pass into yellow. In the young guillemot, also, the interior of the mouth is pinkish merely, whilst in the grown bird it is of a pleasing lemon or gamboge. With the fulmar petrel again, we have much the same
